#Santana sucks

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #36:

Trans, Part 1

She was lovely.

It was the fall of 1993, our final year of high school, and she'd already had too hard of a life: no memories of her birth mother, an altogether lackluster father and a stepmother who was all mock kindness over hard edges, the resentment covert and steady.

We had come together at the dawn of high school, two sensitive kids from opposite ends of LA who met in a summer camp glory hole. That's what you call a crumbling spot of earth in goldrush country, formed a century or more beforehand by a single stick of hopeful dynamite.

I remember the two of us scurrying down into the near darkness with a few other kids, a box of surreptitiously swiped matches in tow. A four foot high and wobbly baby pine was beginning to block off the entrance, a pine that has since devoured the glory hole in its quest for strength and water. Today that tree is well over a hundred feet tall.

But 31 years ago it gave no protest as we lit all those matches, one at a time, and talked heatedly about God knows what. Joni says it best: that's how our time began.

We were just two kids, both a bit scarred, both a bit scared. We craved reassurance mostly; we listened to Love's Forever Changes while holding hands.

Years passed. We lived far apart and her parents did all they could to block the relationship but we still managed to see one another with some regularity as ninth grade turned into tenth, then turned and turned again until suddenly it was our senior year and we'd grown up together. I validated and praised her. She did the same for me. We listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen. She sewed me a flannel shirt.

And then, after all our years of promise and worry, I was suddenly done. Everything between us was revealed to me as too grown up, too heavy and troubling. What's more, I was in love, and for real this time, and with someone else, someone who showed me an adult future that was both brilliant and steadfast.

I was 17 years old. I wanted to be more than a good boyfriend. I wanted to be happy.

And so I had to let her terribly down.

There was no point in showing her my brand new, dollar bin, version of Trans when she showed up at my parents' house on that hot fall day for our long scheduled Dylan show at the Hollywood Bowl. Santana, ridiculously, shared the bill; the only thing I knew about Santana was that Jonathan Richman told his early audiences that listening to Santana records was a general waste of one's time. I believed Jonathan, of course. I still do.

But there she was on my doorstep, flushed with excitement, her two front teeth freshly chipped from a older-step-sister-saddled-with-too-much-responsibility accident in her grandparents' pool. She had no idea whatsoever what as about to happen.

Could I have spared her from that night? Could I have written her an honest letter or made a simple phone call explaining that I was so terribly sorry but that I had fallen in love with someone else?

Yes, I could have. And yes, of course, I should have.

But the simple truth is that I craved the drama. After all, I was listening to a lot of Trans and Another Side of Bob Dylan at the time: records full of self-importance, drama and manly vibes. And, after a childhood of being chosen last with a sigh for every social and athletic event, I was ready to do something audacious, cold and rash. I'd tell her that we were done in person. In front of all my friends. At a Bob Dylan show.

"It ain't me, babe. No, no, no. It ain't me, babe. It ain't me your looking for. Babe."

Good God: this story is awful, isn't it? Happily, I came slightly to my senses and chickened out, taking her instead, pre-show, to the Mexican hole in the wall down the street from my house for tacos and truth.

Listen, I said. I'm sorry but...

She was furious. Livid. I was selfish, she declared. I was stupid. I had ruined everything.

I listened. All her assessments struck me as reasonable. My teenage fantasies about how cool the whole thing was gonna be were obviously hollow and dumb. And so I finished her taco. It was the only useful action I could come up with.

And then I introduced her to Thom Moore.

Do you know who I'm talking about? We're talking Thom Moore of Moore Brothers fame. If that doesn't mean anything to you, go listen to this:

The reckless, way-cooler-than-Beck, north LA trip hot white man music he was making at that point is not available on YouTube. Which is stupid. This song is from a few years later, after GBV had largely beat him to the punch. But Thom was, and still is, the coolest person to ever befriend me. We haven't talked in 20 years or more now but, whatever: he's so cool. Hi Thom!

It was just supposed to be the three of us that night, driving to see Dylan in my parents' armadillo cake of a Ford Tempo, which responded to heat of any kind by simply turning off. Mid-freeway? Yeah, if it got too hot the car would just stop. I figured Thom would lighten the mood between the two of us and stop her from freaking out too much. But I had a long ago buddy named Matt who always knew how to upstage me.

(We're not talking here about my best buddy Matt, whose favorite Shakey songs are Homegrown, F%^&king Up and T-Bone, in that order, but another, long ago buddy, also named Matt. He was not a Shakey guy. Rather, he was into The Rembrandts.)

Yeah, Rembradts Matt was definitely not as cool as T-Bone Matt. That's just the way it is, baby. (And for the record, I did not make myself listen to the song above while writing this; I just pasted it in so you'd get a sense of the gentleman in question. So feel free to follow my lead and take a hard pass.)

And so, anyway, Rembrandts Matt, who had caught wind of my sophomoric break up plans for the evening, decided to do me one better by dumping his own long term, also-out-of-town girlfriend immediately before the concert as well.

But Rembrandts Matt did his dumping in even more spectacular fashion. Things were thrown. Blame was cast. My famous brother remembers juvenile fisticuffs occurring between them in the small hours of the night ahead inside a donut shop. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that all the men involved in this night that I'm chronicling were obviously rather childish.

And so, rather than wind up driving to the concert with just my poor, suddenly-ex, ladyfriend beside me and a surely-he'll-pick-us-all-up wit like Thom in the back seat, my long ago buddy Matt's own far less poor, but also suddenly-ex, ladyfriend wound up in my backseat as well - she absolutely refused to drive with Matt. And my own suddenly ex-lady friend joined her back there, telling Thom that if he wanted to sit beside to the world's worst person he was welcome to the passenger seat. Those two ladies' indignation filled up my parents' Tempo like hot farts after pizza in a sixth grade bunkhouse. It was going to be one hell of a drive.

"What's going on here ladies?" Thom asked, spinning around to grin into their fury as I pulled away from the curb, steering wheel gripped like a life preserver. Thom, who was a new friend to me at that point, had never met either of the ladies in question before that moment. He had no real idea what had just gone down, but he was digging the vibes.

After getting the general gist of things through clenched jaws and unprintable words, most of which began with F's, A's and Z's, Thom started riffing. He'd once spent half an hour freestyle rapping in the very same car about squeezable canned cheese; he could riff.

"Listen: ladies! Take a step back!" he declared. Whenever he spoke it seemed like someone was beatboxing in support. "These knuckleheads who let you down tonight are surely insignificant blips in what will be two very long lifetimes of romantic opportunity! We're off to a Dylan show, right? Well, there's gonna be thousands upon thousands of lonely ass, equally dumb men there for you to choose from. I mean, come on! Here, let me angle the rear view mirror a bit so you can take a look at yourselves. Uncross those angry arms and take a look: yeah, that's it! You are both, I must say, rather fetching! I know plenty of guys - hell, I am one of those guys - who'd be all too happy to take the place of either of these - or both of these! - dopes by your side."

He cackled through it all, having the time of his life.

"Shut up Thom!" they both bellowed in response. They too had never met before that night but they already spoke in perfect unison, holding each other's hands and utterly bonded in cold, dark and shimmering, feminine fury.

I won't give you every last detail of what happened next - and, I promise, Trans does winds up central to this story (just relax already: this is Part 1 of what will be a few posts dedicated to Neil's mostly cool and bizarre record) - so let's hit fast-forward:

...there we are, sitting midway back from the stage beside a guy 25 years older than us; he's describing how his life was fundamentally changed in 1974 when he saw Bob perform Ballad of a Thin Man on solo piano. (My famous brother says there is no evidence whatsoever that such a performance ever occurred)...

...and there we are, trying to have a teenage picnic post show in the parking lot. Someone's mother has sent a chocolate cake with a big butcher knife for the slicing. But Matt's ex-lady friend is whispering again in the ear of my own ex-ladyfriend and then mine is taking the knife from his and brandishing it at me in a mock-serious manner than fails to come across as mock-serious but is instead rather terrifying. I whimper and retreat. To this day I do not tend to eat cake...

... and there we are, and it's well after one in the morning, and the two of us are standing on a street corner somewhere in Hollywood, fruitlessly ringing the doorbell of some family friend of her parents at whose house she is supposed to stay the night (because staying at my own house was forever out of the question). But the damn person won't answer the bell and it's cold out and so I give her my favorite flannel - not the one she sewed for me, that one was always itchy, but my favorite flannel - because what the hell else can I offer her of any value, and then the door finally opens and in she goes, still furious, and I know we'll probably never see each other again... and, oh crap: she's still wearing my flannel!

I arrived home around two in the morning totally demoralized. The night was supposed to have been epic, the kind of thing I'd boast about and include in my congratulatory memoirs some day. But Santana had played forever like one big Joe Freakin' Lala cover band and Dylan had sung Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again so incomprehensibly that I had only realized he what he was performing during the final chorus, and I'd spent the night so scared and so embarrassed and so, so, so deeply disappointed in myself. I was being a jerk to a lovely person. I had probably ruined her life.

At that point in my adolescence I pretty much only entered and exited my parents' house through my bedroom window. Doing so seemed like the cool way to do things and it exhibited the kind of cavalier independence from tradition and family ties which I craved. So I sighed and circled around back. It was time to hurdle inside and be sad and alone.

But my room was packed. Homegrown Matt was in there, not Rembrandts Matt. Plus there were 3 or 4 other of my friends. They were all wide awake, utterly uninvited and brimming over with joy.

Plus, Thom was there, working the turntable. And he had Shakey's manly panegyric for all things troubling, goofy and danceable turned up to 11:

Yes, it was true: I'd been a jerk to her. And yes, I'd let her down.

But I'd also done the right thing. And it was over. My room was now filled with unexpected joy and Neil Young. My friends had picked me first for their team.

And that's how I knew that everything was going to work out. That's how I knew that I was going to be okay.

And so was she. So was she.

[soopertiddies]

I've been rewatching s3 and the early half of s3 was actually wild and it felt like almost unnecessarily cruel? especially to the gay poc characters..like the way they treated mercedes with the whole wss and troubletones storyline boils my blood to this day 😒

the sanatana storyline was especially awful and other people have already covered how bad it was way better than I could but the glee writers handled it was actually disgusting

you’re actually so right about them being wildly effeminophobic to kurt in s3 😑😑 like it felt extremely out of place and just nasty

also i think kurt and mercedes should have been allowed to kill sebastian and mr schuester with hammers for the effeminophobic and rascist bullshit they had to deal with

So, disclaimer, I haven't reached season 3 yet I had watched the scene of Bieste, Emma and Artie being horrible to Kurt because it popped up on youtube. But I did watch it when it came out and I DO remember that season 3 filled me with rage, and this is absolutely why.

I don't think Glee handled any storyline well, maybe Kurt getting bullied, but even then I think it was only because Chris (happy bday king) is genuinely good at acting.

And GOD they never gave Mercedes a genuine storyline they gave her one about tater tots and one about her being 'lazy'.

And not to get back on my 'I hate ryan murphy' narrative, but you could tell which cast members he didn't like by how they treated their characters (Chris, Dianna, Amber, and Naya) their characters were always dragged through the mud, they were always painted as doing something wrong even if they were completely justified

(i.e Santana slapping Finn because she was OUTTED and her getting in trouble for it, Kurt not getting into NYADA even though he did amazing, Schue yelling at Quinn even though she genuinely needed help, and Mercedes being called lazy and never getting what she rightfully deserved (like the Maria role)

You're absolutely right about everything, and my apologies for ranting once again those four are my favorite characters and I'm very passionate about how shitty they were treated.

(Also, they should be allowed to murder).

[songbirdlopez]

God, I'm so sick of bad faith takes about Santana. Someone on reddit said that they don't believe Santana cared about Marley's ED genuinely and only used it to get back at Quinn???? How fucking stupid do you have to be.

That just isn't how the scene goes? Quinn is the one who brings up their high school rivalry. Like, did they not notice that? Unfortunately San falls for the trap and gets distracted but she's still the first (and only) one to call out Kitty after Marley faints.

Jesus fucking Christ what sort of cognitive dissonance and just extreme hatred for a character do you have to have to actually think that shit. Fucking dumb cunts man.

[get-more-bald]

you can pry autistic jotaro from my cold, dead fucking hands

[aingeal98]

Season 6 Brittana when Santana is able to understand Brittany more than anyone else in the world has ever been capable of (which she always has but it's at it's peak in s6) and when Brittany cheerfully insults someone leaving them confused if she's serious or stupid, Santana has that big love struck grin on her face because she's finally in on the joke. They're older and wiser and still just as smitten.

[smmagain]

santana practice

[sillysunflowe]

Oh I forgot to post this mfin pic wip

(Ain't finishing it tho)

[autisticjonathanjoestar]

you know the. yeah.

[thomas-the-goat-of-satan]

oh my god yeah, season three of Glee fucking Sucks, like a solid eighty percent of the time. crazy how people hail it as the peak, just because it's like. a Little Bit Gayer than the other seasons. psh. Santana Lopez should've been allowed to Kill People.

[cryscendo]

i don’t really post on tiktok anymore but i did make this so i guess that counts for something. figured i post it here bc i had fun making it lmao

[lottieurl]

it's me and mari against the world

[giveuthemo0n]

kurt: it’s js a room, finn!! we can redecorate if you want to!!

finn: it might seem crazy what i’m ’bout to say…

[sohemotional]

The best Glee season 4 moment will forever be Santana’s roast of Sam in Diva right before she completely demolishes him. Not that he’s even worthy of singing a duet with someone on her level

[songbirdlopez]

Another day another glee redditor defending Finn outing Santana. It's a hell hole.

[hevansiowa]

brittana is when the day met the night by panic! at the disco

[thecupidclub55]

Santana Lopez: Snixx

Santana x y/n: